EIF music reviews: Florian Boesch & Malcolm Martineau | London Symphony Orchestra | Ímar

Queen’s Hall

Repeat visitors to the EIF’s Queen’s Hall series, particularly for German Lieder, yesterday morning’s recital made it very easy to figure out why baritone Florian Boesch and pianist Malcolm Martineau get invited back.

In repertoire by just two composers, Schumann and Brahms, and mainly by the former, contrast and variety were infinite with both artists’ musical palettes finding colours and nuanced tints that told the music’s stories.

Far removed from the concept of singer and dutiful accompanist, Boesch and Martineau are a closely bound duo who invite the audience into their performance as if in confidential conversation.

No more so than in the intensity of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, emotionally on full charge in the turbulence of shared pain resulting from lost love and sorrow. Only the still beauty of the closing piano solo gave a glimmer of life offering something more hopeful as the cycle drew to its completion.

In a first half of songs by both composers, Boesch’s vocal artistry flexed with agility and natural control across his whole register from hushed, almost whispered, high notes to richly probing deep bass, the tenderness of transition from Brahms’ Sehnsucht straight into Dein blaues Auge being a particular moment to cherish.

Carol Main

London Symphony Orchestra ★★★★

Usher Hall

Elisabeth Maconchy, pupil of Vaughan Williams, who composed her Nocturne in the early 50s is sorely neglected. Influenced remarkably by Central Europe, she writes big bold lines, using – here, the fine London Symphony Orchestra’s – every resonant instrument.

A swerve then, to early Hollywood luminary Korngold´s Violin Concerto, a sweetly sun-danced landscape before a twirling conclusion when he seems to stop dreaming and don stomping cowboy boots.

Vilde Frang, astonishing violinist, tends towards the inward, to a glittering virtuosity played on an inbreath with fierce small explosions. Her care towards the wider score, to the orchestra´s fabulous music, is exceptional.

Vaughan Williams was not one bit interested in Victorian prettiness. He was, though, fascinated by Walt Whitman´s poetry, words with their own angular, wild music, by no means obviously simple to set into a vast, titanic Sea Symphony.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus exploded into spectacular sound, waves crashing over us, the wind howling through our hair, the orchestral brass roaring, strings flying and woodwind interjecting plaintive, beseeching murmers.

Two soloists seem almost superfluous in all this. Will Liverman´s baritone sounded too smooth; soprano Natalya Romaniw soared when the texture thinned; how well conductor Sir Antonio Pappano knows how to manage great, voluptuous scores. We were left gazing at the stars, clutching the mystery of our souls.

Mary Miller

Ímar ★★★

The Hub

They’re named after a ninth-century Viking leader, which is perhaps why there’s something of the berserker in Ímar’s take-no-prisoners approach.

Having emerged ten years ago out of Glasgow’s fecund session scene, this pan-Celtic quintet, featuring five virtuosic players from Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, opened with a vengeance, characteristically full-tilt jigs snapping into rapid-fire reels.

With the formidably tight-knit front line of fiddler Tomás Callister, uilleann piper Ryan Murphy and concertina player Mohsen Amini powered by Adam Brown’s bodhran and Adam Rhodes on bouzouki, the precision of their playing in largely group-composed sets such as Bangers could be thrilling, as when the rhythm section suddenly broke off, to leave pipes, fiddle and concertina in full, unencumbered flight.

Another sequence, The Third Attempt (celebrating Amini finally passing his driving test) was another breathless jig set with a nimble concertina break from the new driver.

At times, however, the continual high energy could all get a bit too much. For an ostensibly acoustic band, they were more amped up than was really necessary for the relatively intimate setting of The Hub, and Amini’s exhortations for audience participation could be wearing.

There was the occasional let-up, however in their more laid-back composition White Strand and a wistful number called Afar. And at one point, the rest of the band quit the stage, leaving Brown to regale us with a dazzling bodhran solo that whirred and whomped and did everything but talk.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it was an old air with which they drew towards a close, the Irish tune Slane, also known as the hymn Be Thou My Vision, fiddle and pipes sounding over organ-like concertina in what was offered as a lament for Gaza. Then it was back down that final straight at full gallop.

Jim Gilchrist

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